


Aurore Australe

by Sing



Series: Light Your Way Home Trilogy [3]
Category: Sleepy Hollow (TV)
Genre: Angst, Drama, F/M, Romance, small town
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-22
Updated: 2017-08-21
Packaged: 2018-12-18 11:24:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11873358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sing/pseuds/Sing
Summary: Something Abbie never saw coming has shaken her up and she feels sure her careful facade is cracking.Torn between her insecurities and the myriad layers of her relationship with her past and present, it feels as though walls are closing in.But maybe opening the door to something she left behind, is the key, to putting her past, really behind her.Finding home, in herself.





	Aurore Australe

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own sleepy hollow

We leave Mabie's together, in Luke's car.

I volunteer to sit in the back, more space so I can sprawl all my nervous energy and hold myself tightly together without Luke glancing at me sideways, or Mr Crane meeting eyes with me in the mirror---but that happens anyway. He keeps glancing at me and it makes me anxious. When we reach my house I scamper gladly up the steps before Luke can get out a word and put the key in the lock.

"Wait!" he calls.

" _What_ , Luke, what."

He bounds up the driveway and puts a hand to my back, lowering his head to whisper in my ear. "I'm going to check the place out first. Alright?" I swallow, nod, gesture for him to go in ahead of me.

He's meticulous about it, and I'm grateful.

I'm not really sure if I believe Orion would break into my home and be lurking here for me, not really. But am I still shaken up and uneasy enough to believe anything? Yes, yes I am. Watching Luke move around, checking the basement and going up the stairs, hand on his holster the whole time fills me with comfort.

If something does happen to me---don't think that why am I letting myself think that---it won't be for Luke's lack of trying for my safety. When he comes back down he meets me at the front door and gently reaches to touch my shoulder.

"Listen, I…..what you saw of him out there, that's…..that's not who Crane really is, I don't think so, anyway, he's just had a rough go, for a longer time than anyone should."

"I met his wife today and I teach his daughter, Luke, whatever is going on in that family, it's no business of mine. I'm a teacher. I….I shouldn't have seen that side of Aurore's father tonight. I work with Joe, it's all----"

"Sssh, wait," Luke coaxes. "He's my friend, Abbie, and I care about you. I…..I'm sorry I screwed up probably bringing you tonight, I just…."

"You couldn't leave either of us alone,"

He glances at me, and then back at the man in the car, restlessly running his own hands through his hair. "He just needed someone to keep him level. And I promised I wouldn't leave you---"

"But you're doing it anyway," I cut in.

I don't mean to sound malicious.

I don't mean to bite.

But I _do_.

_I do._

Maybe sometimes I'm just a feral skittish angry thing that scratches and claws at every turn because its afraid.

The silence stretches between us as Luke glances at Crane, and then back at me. "Listen, I'll….drop him off, stay with him a bit, and then come right back here. I won't even knock, I'll just stay in the car out here in your driveway, okay?"

"You don't have to---"

"Stop pushing me away even while you reel me in, Abbie. Leave everything else aside tonight and let me do my job protecting the public."

I raise a brow. "Do you protect everyone by staking out their house----"

"If I have to be on watch for abusive unpredictable ex boyfriends I will," he shoots back. "If I have to so he doesn't sneak up here making apologies and you let him in because you're headstrong and think you can handle him and he turns on you and tries to force you into taking him back or deciding if he can't have you _no one_ will, I will _**damn** well stake out your house to stop that from happening_."

It takes everything within Luke, I see the way the veins strain in his neck, it takes everything in him not to yell for emphasis. Not to show me the depth and seriousness of his words in volume and force. He's trying so hard not to scare me. Like Orion did.

Like Crane accidentally did.

"I don't want you to make a production out of this," I say at length. "I……Mrs. Crane saw him today, he….Orion won't like ruining hisreputation, he wouldn't risk coming back here Luke. I wouldn't do it."

"You should report it Abbie. I mean it…..I mean…..maybe I'll just draw it up myself."

"You can't do that."

"Who's going to stop me."

"I'm not turning my back on one man trying to make decisions for me only for you to start." I snap. "You, you don't get to make choices for me. I make my choices, good ones, bad ones, by myself."

Not men.

Not like daddy who decided to abandon us.

Not like Orion who decides I belong to him.

But like me, who decides to lie to her mother and cheat systems to plot an escape.

Like me, who takes advantage of maybe the first person I could find that would care about me, blind and brazen enough to go with my schemes.

"I just want you safe, Abbie. And Orion's reputation has nothing to do with that---"

"I don't, want, the _attention,_ Luke. I don't, want nor need, everyone in this too damn small town already being privy to my life. Look at the Cranes." I heave, I can't seem to catch my breath.

Luke purses his lips and looks away.

"I don't need, to be like them. Everyone, having ideas and whispers and rumours about who they are…….let me, just, breathe. Okay. I can't think right now. You're stressing me out."

He watches me carefully before reaching, slowly, tentatively to touch my cheek, waiting for me to spook, to flinch away.

I turn my head but I step towards him. I hear him exhale and his arms come up around me. "Don't hesitate to call me. To turn him in, Abbie. He doesn't need a second chance. Doesn't deserve one."

I wince because my hands are trapped between us and the pressure hurts. He quickly releases me and steps back. "Okay?"

"Yes, _damn it_." I snap, and then soften. "Yes, Luke. Thanks."

I see him out the door, eyes momentarily connecting with Crane in the front. I watch them pull away and then I go to the kitchen, I sit down at the counter and fold my arms before laying my head down.

I breathe.

* * *

 

Once.

Twice.

Three times, at a crawl, around the block where Crane lives.

Silence permeates, and Luke doesn't bother to ask for the company of radios crackle and spark, unless he gets a call for work specifically. Crane leans with his head on the window, face forlorn.

"What's happening to me," He manages at last.

Luke screws up his mouth in frown. He glances sideways at the man he calls friend. Only friend, really.

And their true common ground is, was alcohol. If he's being frank, they're not the type of friends, who go out of their way to see each other. More the type that recognize the other in a crowded space and like calls to like so they drift into the others company.

But they've shared a lot. Maybe more, most likely more, with the other, over a beer, than they had told anyone else, in town. He knew about the tumult of Crane's marriage and how the man was scarred from warfare. Crane had told him, about the blind moment when they'd thought having a child could repair, bridge the chasm of distance growing between them.

Had told him about the treatments, and the mishap at the clinic that they didn't bother suing over.

A child was still a child.

They loved her regardless what she looked like.

He was the officer that turned up when Crane was unruly. He was the one that warned him to know when to cut himself off, and stagger home before causing a disturbance.

Ichabod Crane was the one Luke told about being a youth straddling the fine line between delinquency and brilliance.

Crane had asked him long ago, "What had changed." __

* * *

Back then, sitting at the bar and getting a faraway look in his eyes, Luke had answered. "Losing things, letting things, someone, go? It….it gives you perspective." he'd scoffed, knocking back the rest of his drink. They'd both been on the second. Luke had already straightened out years ago but loneliness and the passing of his father, had made him melancholy.

Nothing like what Crane endured, but enough to be there with him.

He'd thought of the brown eyes he'd bid fare well too.

The letter he forged.

The picture and laminate and records he'd falsified. Cause he could. Cause she asked him too. Because he loved her so much he wanted her to run away if that was what would make her happy.

Even the insane choice.

Covering his tracks, on his own, after. Determining to want more for himself, the way she had. Be worthy, be the dream he'd set her free to chase, knowing she'd never come back to him----until she did.

"A whole damn lot of perspective."

* * *

 

That had been a night too laced with fog in his memory to place a date. Spending time with Crane had been a subtle reminder to Luke that he had dug himself out, and driven away from a path could lead downhill and that he shouldn't sit there with the man courting a return to it.

He got a hold of himself and quit.

Crane just hasn't been as lucky.

"What's happening to me," Crane asks again, voice a little weaker. "How…..how can I…..she can't just……all of those years….."

Luke glances at him again. "We both know things between you and the wife haven't been right for a while now, Crane, I mean. People talk. People have seen you,"

"Does that mean she's absolved?" Crane snaps. "Am I just supposed to let by gones be----"

"No, but you've gotta realize, everyone has a breaking point Crane and….you guys... you've hit it."

"I stayed." Crane rasps. "Her betrayal, and still I stayed."

Luke inhales deeply. "You should have left. "

He feels Crane turn his eyes on him and he glances back. Biting his lips together, with a sudden break of clarity, with everything he stands to lose, he sees the simple solution that could have been. But it's so damn hard to reason with hurt and trauma. It's so hard to argue for the right thing when bitterness and pain cut so deep.

To turn away from everything, after fighting so hard to come back to your own personal wasteland.

Crane swallows and nods tightly, agreeing.

"I should have left."


End file.
